Chilling memories of homeless street count

Jolyne Baarck, director of Family Youth Interventions in Mount Clemens, spent the early morning hours of Jan. 23 as a team leader for the Point In Time count of homeless in Macomb County. She went from there to work at the Macomb County Community Connection Day in Warren. (David N. Posavetz/Daily Tribune)

When I volunteered to help conduct Macomb County’s census of the homeless, I had visions of riding in a heated car, counting homeless people through the windows, passing out a blanket here or there, and asking a survey question or two of the homeless people we encountered.

Our goal was to establish a count of homeless on the streets, not in shelters. This “Point-In-Time” tally is a biannual effort mandated by HUD to establish reportable numbers of homeless in Macomb County for future funding and program support. We were to observe and count those living in outdoor locations or facilities deemed uninhabitable.

The leaders of this massive project assigned our team to drive the main streets of Clinton Township, get our count and, hopefully, I thought, be back by 6:30 a.m., in time to enjoy a hot breakfast.

I was right about the breakfast, wrong about how I would be spending those early-morning hours.

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Our team leader, Jolyne Baarck, director of Family Youth Interventions, proved that when we started on the road at 3:45 a.m. on Wednesday, with temperatures hovering near zero. Our first checkpoint would be near cement bridges along a main roadway. Parking her vehicle on the roadside, Baarck popped out and headed down embankments toward the bridge. I pulled on my hood and gloves and grabbed my notebook as I scrambled down the sloped area to keep up. She and teammate Anna reached the bridge first and shined their flashlights underneath in the crevices, looking for signs of people sleeping there.

We found several, wedged in, blocked from the cold and wind as much as possible, sleeping amid plastic tarps, cardboard, blankets, sleeping bags, anything that could be scavenged to protect them from one of season’s coldest nights. Baarck judged there to be one female among those we saw sleeping.

Our instructions included showing respect, not to shine flashlights on homeless peoples’ faces or belongings, and not to wake anyone. Following the guidelines, we scanned the area with our lights, not stopping too long in one spot, with Baarck on her knees trying to determine how many people were lodged there.

I felt uneasy looking at such a stark sight, but I don’t imagine the people sleeping there were comfortable, either. The image of those plastic tarps and assorted personal effects is one that won’t leave me soon. Nor will memories of the rest of our 2-1/2 hour trek through the township.

We searched near 24-hour businesses, strip malls with food outlets, industrial areas, any niche for street people seeking “anything to get out of the wind and be undetected,” said Baarck, a veteran volunteer of these Point-In-Time counts. The count teams also look for stacks of cardboard or wooden pallets that can be used to fashion a shelter, another sign of where a homeless person might be.

Still not quite recovered from the sights under the bridges, I surveyed the dark landscape as we drove along Gratiot, Groesbeck, Garfield, wondering how many people were sleeping in the cold, in places we didn’t know about.

Other reports from the census teams were of homeless sleeping outside on benches at a Roseville church, and another person who found a caring gas station clerk who let him sleep in the restroom there. Others found a few homeless sleeping under semitrailer trucks to keep warm.

We found an “encampment” where evidence of habitation included plastic milk crates, used as seats, arranged in a circle and dried tree branches and foliage uprooted and arranged as protective barriers. But no one was there.

This discovery came at nearly 6 a.m. The homeless are usually on the road by then, Baarck explained, making their way to warm indoor destinations (stores, libraries, malls) before being detected in daylight. Our team entered parking lots to eye the inside of Dumpsters where homeless sometimes take refuge. Baarck said a person using a Dumpster for sleep usually first removes any “smelly garbage” before climbing in, and often will leave any personal effects outside the unit so as to keep them relatively clean and free of odor.

We trekked deep into wooded areas looking for any signs of habitation, but didn’t find anyone. Project organizers usually pray for snow on count nights because it’s easier to follow footprints into woods — or Dumpsters.

We walked the aisles in a 24-hour grocery store looking for homeless who might have been seeking shelter. Nothing there, but a clerk told us the night before a homeless person cashed in returnable bottles at 4 a.m.

Part of our project was to try and “interview” any homeless person we found (again, we were not to wake anyone who was sleeping).

The checklist: age, how long on the streets, single or married, a military veteran. But we did not locate anyone, other than those sleeping under the bridges, much to Baarck’s surprise.

So it was a good news/bad news night on the streets for our team.

The bad news is this could skew the Macomb County count for funding and programs. The good news is few homeless battled the harsh conditions in the usual spots within our Clinton Township territory.

I’m hoping they found indoor shelters to protect them from one of the year’s coldest nights.